On International Women’s Day, step up the fight against capitalist oppression

Lynda McEwan

The ‘official’ international womens day.com website, sponsored by an array of big business corporations, highlights the campaign theme #breakthebias.

On its website the it calls for women and their supporters to strike a pose with crossed arms in order to “be part of a movement that creates a world free of bias, stereotypes and discrimination.”

It talks about individual responsibility for our own thoughts and actions, which whilst true ignores the roots of IWD which was a united, working-class struggle of women workers in 1908 in New York to win the right to vote and form trade unions.

This action led to 30,000 women shirtwaist makers taking strike action the following year which resulted in the first permanent trade unions for women workers in the USA and inspired Clara Zetkin, German socialist feminist, to state in 1910, that “the socialist women of all countries will hold each year a Women’s Day, whose foremost purpose it must be to aid the attainment of women’s suffrage…” 

More than a century later, these revolutionary ideas have been lost in the corporate highjacking of such heroic solidarity and international action which doesn’t reflect the reality facing thousands of women and families in Scotland today. 

After more than a decade of Tory austerity, passed meekly on by the SNP/Green Scottish government, families are facing destitution. Women’s services have been cut to the bone leaving Women’s Aid Scotland begging for more funding last year.

In 2019, 1,235 women and children contacted Women’s Aid in one single day, but they reported they were unable to provide refuge for 58% of the women and 38% of the children.

The pandemic and its repeated lockdowns created a huge increase in domestic violence, with numbers soaring. The SNP/Green Scottish government announced a £5 million cash injection, which, while welcome, isn’t enough to reverse the years of underfunding. 

Changes to the welfare system have also played a key role in the discrimination women face. The introduction of Universal Credit, it’s two child policy with the horrific rape clause and its payment to one half of a couple which facilitates financial abuse by controlling men, has exacerbated women falling further into poverty and being trapped in coercive relationships. 

This, combined with rising food and fuel costs – household gas and electricity bills are set to rise by up to 50% in April along with a national insurance increase – will have a devastating affect on working class women.

We have already witnessed another violent start to this year with the murder of 22-year-old teacher, Ashling Murphy in Ireland. Protests in response to this horrific killing have broken out across the whole of Ireland and the rest of Britain.

Women have been instrumental in the uprising against unaffordable fuel prise rises in Kazakhstan. The courageous strike action taken in 2018 in Glasgow by low paid women carers which won a monumental £500 million for equal pay in Glasgow is set to be revisited, with more strike action planned due to the SNP-run council reneging on the deal.

This action is what is needed to build the basis of a mass working class movement to fight against the discrimination of women in Scotland and internationally. 

Socialist Party Scotland stands in solidarity with all women fighting oppression but we also say that we need to go further. 

systemic change

• On International Women’s Day and beyond we need to link the fight against oppression with a mass campaign for real systemic change.
• For an independent, socialist Scotland with a programme of building decent council housing
• £15 an hour minimum wage, for investment into women’s services
• a fully funded NHS, for a fair and equal benefits system that gives women autonomy over their finances and choices, all fought for through the trade unions and by socialists and in our communities